Pudgy Penguins founder ColeThereum returns: a red flag for Robinhood Chain?
Cole Villemain, better known as “ColeThereum,” is back in the NFT market this week with a fantasy video game collection on Robinhood Chain. My take: this looks more like a warning sign than a comeback story. His time at Pudgy Penguins was followed by allegations of treasury misuse. Several earlier projects fell apart quickly. Robinhood Chain has problems of its own. Add those facts together and the launch looks unusually risky, especially while crypto is still trying to recover.
Villemain previewed the collection on Sunday. The post drew more than 500,000 views. Then the reaction split. Some people welcomed him back. Plenty of others remembered the old disputes. Attention arrived first. Trust did not.
Those disputes include allegations involving the Pudgy Penguins treasury and complaints about eBoy Outlet, a dropshipping site that blockchain investigator ZachXBT covered in August 2021. Customers said their orders never arrived and that getting refunds was difficult. Villemain denied wrongdoing and said he refunded the affected customers. That distinction matters. Allegations are not findings, but they do remain part of a founder’s public record.
His record also includes “My Fucking Pickle,” an NFT collection that collapsed within weeks. ZachXBT called it a “cash grab project.” The NFTs now have a floor price of about $13, down from more than $540 on June 27, 2021. That is a fall of roughly 98%.
It is a brutal number.
A drop like that matters. NFT trading volume fell 97% by 2022, while prices declined by about 98% on average. Some collections that once sold for six figures lost 99% of their value. None of this tells us exactly what the new project will do. It does give buyers a reason to slow down before sending money. Is that overly cautious? For a speculative NFT, no.
Villemain also chose Robinhood Chain instead of Ethereum. The chain launched on July 1 and was first presented as a place for tokenized stocks and US Treasuries. Its CEO later admitted that the project had lost focus and become crowded with memecoins. In early July, Protos reported a rush of wallet drainers, phishing pages, rug pulls, and meme tokens that quickly collapsed.
That is a rough launchpad for a speculative NFT project. The chain is new, volatile, and still trying to figure out what it wants to be. A less established network can bring attention and cheaper transactions. It can also mean fewer people are watching a project. Trouble becomes harder to spot.
Most guides say a new chain can offer upside. That’s only half right. I would not call the choice deliberate misconduct, but the timing raises a fair question: why launch here?
Villemain’s marketing leans into memories of the 2021 NFT boom. He described the plan as “running back one of the oldest tricks in the book of 2021 $NFT projects” and said he was “delusional enough to believe I can drop the #1 $NFT on Robinhood Chain.” The jokes might be self-aware. I’ll be honest: they also make the old cycle feel exciting again. That helps when someone is selling a highly speculative asset.
Bitcoin has recovered this year and was trading near $61,400 in recent checks. That does not make the recovery safe. New projects with disputed leadership can damage sentiment quickly if they fail, and the fallout may reach other NFTs and altcoins. Crypto forgets quickly when prices are rising. When they fall, it remembers everything.
The community reaction has mostly been doubtful. One developer wrote, “The space never changes.” Another X user predicted another disappointment: “This is not the first time he’s launched something and rug pulled it using his luck with PP as a cosign for legitimacy.” The comments expose an unresolved market problem. People accused of misconduct can still return, attract hundreds of thousands of views, and build a new audience. That is the signal.
The market is different from what it was in 2021. Regulators are paying closer attention, and large financial institutions have become more involved. But attention is still cheap. A controversial founder can return long before questions about an earlier project have gone away. Counter to the usual advice, market maturity is not measured by how quickly a launch attracts eyes. It is measured by what happens when people ask hard questions.
The original Pudgy Penguins dispute is worth keeping in mind. On January 5, 2022, allegations emerged that the founders had drained the project’s $ETH. The next day, NFT holders voted to remove them. In April 2022, the remaining leadership sold Pudgy Penguins to Luca Netz for 750 $ETH, worth about $2.5 million at the time.
Netz later moved the brand into physical toys, which sold more than one million units through major retailers. That worked out well for Pudgy Penguins. It does not erase the earlier management problems or the fact that holders had to force a change. I keep coming back to that sequence. A later success can coexist with an earlier failure.
Villemain’s X bio says, “All tweets are sarcasm or theatrics and not financial advice.” Yes, that may limit liability. No, it does not settle questions about responsibility.
What this means
Villemain’s return could bring back the cash-grab culture that hurt NFT buyers in 2021. Anyone considering a purchase should look at the founder’s history, the wallet structure, the contract, and the chain’s security record first. Skip this step.
Robinhood Chain already has an identity problem and reports of scams. A project launched there carries more risk than its marketing may suggest. Why does this matter? Because the chain’s reputation becomes part of the project’s risk profile, whether the founder acknowledges it or not.
Watch the chain itself. More wallet drainers or rug pulls would make the network harder to trust and could hurt every project built on it. If losses keep piling up, regulators may face renewed pressure to oversee new blockchain platforms and NFT launches more closely. That is not a prediction about this collection. It is what becomes harder to ignore if the same pattern continues.
ETH remains the main currency for NFT trading, and $3,000 is the level I would watch. A sustained move below it could signal broader weakness. My view is simple: in that market, buying a new NFT from a controversial founder on a troubled chain becomes even harder to defend. The risk is visible.